McKinsey Report On Education Skills Gap – Business Insider

A recent McKinsey report estimated that we’re going to have a massive shortage of high-skilled workers. They estimate we could have a shortfall of as many as 85 million high- and middle-skilled workers by 2020.

At the same time, we have massive youth unemployment. A new McKinsey on Society report argues that we’re already seeing the effects. We have 700,000 disengaged youth in Japan, revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia spearheaded by young people, and massively underemployed college graduates in the United States.

It’s a global problem:

“Worldwide, young people are three times more likely than their parents to be out of work. In Greece, Spain, and South Africa, more than half of young people are unemployed, and jobless levels of 25 percent or more are common in Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. In the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, more than one in eight of all 15- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education, or training (NEET).”

Clearly the path from training and education to a good job is somehow broken. The report has a great chart which shows how students feel like their educations are failing them, and how businesses can’t find the workers they need. Even in the United States, 44 percent of young people feel like their eduction hasn’t improved prospects for employment, and 39 percent of employers worldwide can’t find the right people for entry level jobs: